Between Heaven and Hell
by Ophiel
Summary: The story of Gabriel, a man with no memory, and Elisa, a young girl who awoke to a nightmare, and their fight to survive the apocalyptic war between Heaven and Hell. UPDATED! FINALLY! W00P!
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

He woke in a pool of blood.

Rain pelted him silently as he took in his surroundings. A church stood a few yards away, a monstrosity of marble and granite. A high window of colored glass and stone dominated the space above the door. The window immediately drew his attention; a stone cross, superimposed on an interlocking pattern of circles. As he stood, he noticed the blood and quickly checked himself for wounds, but found none. When satisfied, he walked to the church door and turned the knob. 

As the door opened, a rush of warm air spilled out, but to his surprise, he suddenly was chilled to the bone. Hesitantly, he stepped in, and was taken aback by the size of the massive building. High windows of colored glass lined the sidewalls, and each window depicted a biblical scene. A long red rug ran from the door to the main alter, and behind the alter hundreds of white candles burned silently under a monstrous crucifix. The pulpit seemed to stretch away from him, farther and farther, until it seemed like miles to the back wall of the massive room. Disoriented, he sat down, and was startled to hear a voice.

"Who are you?" The voice sounded agitated, almost hysterical.

"I—" He was startled by his own voice, a voice he didn't even recognize, a voice he wouldn't even know if it wasn't coming from him. "I…I don't know. I can't remember." Suddenly a fit of panic hit him. _Who am I,_ He thought. _Why don't I know my own name?_

"What do you mean, you can't remember? Do you have amnesia or something?" A figure stepped out of the shadows. He was tall, and had sandy blond hair; his eyes were a piercing blue, the kind that looked like they could see through to your soul. He appeared to be a priest and was dressed in all black, except for a white collar. "Where did you come from? How did you get here? Have you seen anyone else out there?" The priest pointed toward the door.

"No, why?" The man replied, and then added. "Who are _you_ anyway?"

"My name is Tyler, Tyler Adames. I am the resident minister of this cathedral." Tyler moved a step closer; placing his hand on the amnesiac's shoulder. "We'll need to give you a name for now, at least until you remember your own. How does Gabriel suit you?" the amnesiac thought for a moment, and then shrugged.

"That works for me." Gabriel said indifferently, confused over the randomness of Tyler's actions and questions, but deciding that it would be best not to voice his concerns.

"Good," Tyler moved to the door and placed a board across two large iron hooks that were built into it. Then he turned, "how is it out there?"

"It's storming." Gabriel said.

"Yes, but did everything look _normal_?" Tyler looked agitated, as if something was physically burdening him.

"What do you mean normal? I can't remember what _normal_ looks like." Gabriel shook his head in dismay. "What if I never remember anything ever again?"

"Just take it easy, maybe you just need time." Tyler said reassuringly. "Anyway, what I meant about outside was did it look like metal, was the ground metal, like a chain link fence?" 

Gabriel looked up, "what do you mean?"

"This morning when I left to come here, something _happened_. One second I was walking down a normal, crowded street, and then the next second, I was alone on a path made of metal grating. The sky turned black, and the buildings seemed to _change_, into masses of burnt cement and steel. The wind began to blow softly, but it was a hot, stinking wind, and it made a sound like metal grinding on metal, it sounded like the screaming of a thousand lost souls. I was fright—" Tyler's words were cut off by a horrible sound, a growling rumble that seemed to come from the crucifix over the main alter. 

Suddenly, the gigantic crucifix moved, the joints bent and the mouth turned from a frown of pain into a snarl of hatred, and the figure leapt from the cross and crouched like a wild animal, poised to attack. It was still changing as it hurled itself at Gabriel and Tyler, its mouth opened and an earsplitting howl rose from its throat. The Crown of Thorns seemed to flow back, along the curve of its back, like a mane of razors; its teeth grew in length and turned into barbed spears. When the metamorphosis was complete, the once holy figure stood like a demon from hell, a howl issued forth from the well of spears that was its mouth and it leapt at Gabriel.

Gabriel dodged easily, and something in that motion triggered a dormant memory. He had been a fighter once, maybe even a soldier. By the time he was through reveling in the past though, The Crucifix Demon was on the offensive again. He was pinned on his back, and stared into the mouth of the beast that would surely kill him. Its eyes caught his attention; they appeared more intelligent than a mere beast would posses, it almost seemed to understand that he was afraid, and its eyes filled with glee at that prospect. The Crucifix Demon's claws raked across Gabriel's skin, cutting shallow canals that immediately filled with warm blood. 

Gabriel didn't even hear the gunshots; he didn't notice that the creature was off of him until he heard Tyler yell. He flipped onto his stomach, and watched as Tyler stood in defiance of the beast, the gun jerking in his hand as he fired. Every bullet hit its mark, Gabriel counted ten, and then it clicked empty, and still the beast approached. Tyler ejected the empty clip and slammed another in, but instead of shooting at the thing that would surely destroy him, he yelled for Gabriel, "take the gun and get away from here, now. Don't worry about me, I'll hold this bastard, just run!" Gabriel caught the gun easily, and turned to run, but hesitated as the first screams sounded. He turned back, and to his surprise, Tyler and the beast were nowhere to be seen.

"Tyler!" Gabriel called. Only the silence of the cathedral answered him. He tried again, and got the same result. Finally he turned and moved toward the door, just then another memory surfaced, a memory of fire, of death, and blood, a memory that left him feeling chilled, a feeling that followed him into the rain as he exited the church.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Gabriel hurried down to the street, clutching his newly acquired weapon tightly. After the incident in the church, he was suspicious of everything that moved, and on a stormy night, everything moved. After a while he happened upon an alley that was sheltered from the rain, and needing a warm place to rest, he quickly ducked into it. Once inside, he searched for a dry place with ample lighting and sat with his back to the wall, hugging his wet clothes against his body to conserve warmth.

He slipped off into a restless sleep after about an hour, but was roused from it by a sound. When he opened his eyes, Tyler was standing in front of him. Gabriel was immediately on his feet, and was about to ask one of a thousand questions that had suddenly forced themselves into his brain. "Tyler, how—" Gabriel began, but Tyler suddenly disappeared.

"Go to the bus station, quickly." Tyler's voice filled Gabriel's mind, but a howl from down the alley forced it out. Gabriel lifted the gun and began firing, when he saw what it was he was shooting out, he almost screamed in fury. The Crucifix Demon from the church was galloping down the alleyway toward him. When the gun clicked empty, Gabriel turned and bolted back toward the street, with the demon close behind. When he was back on the street, he immediately began weaving between cars. He could hear the demon howl in fury behind him, and the sound of metal being smashed as it tore through cars in its pursuit of its quick-footed prey.

Gabriel was beginning to tire, and was looking for a place to escape his pursuer when he noticed the alleyway a few yards away, and a sigh of relief ran through him when he noticed the jail cell style door that covered the entrance. He ran as fast as he could for the door, and prayed silently that it wasn't locked. He grabbed at it and jerked at it as hard as he could, and he nearly jumped for joy, as it pulled opened. When he was through, he turned and slammed the door closed, then quickly turned the deadbolt that locked it just in time to shut out the demon. The bars shook as the beast threw itself against them. Gabriel turned to look for a weapon that he could use to make the beast leave, but to his surprise it left him and vanished into the darkness.

Gabriel stood for a moment, then shook his head and turned to walk down the alley. By the time he had reached its midpoint, he could no longer see anything. As he felt his way along, a warm wind blew through, and for a moment Gabriel was happy. But as he made his way back to the street, the sound of the wind changed into a symphony of pain, a noise like metal grinding against metal filled the air, and it suddenly grew hot, and the air grew heavy and stunk like carrion. The first change Gabriel noticed was the street, pavement and concrete had been replaced with rusty metal grating, and through gaps in the grating Gabriel saw a void of inky blackness that seemed to have no end. The buildings on either side of the dark alley he had just been through seemed to have changed too; brick was replaced with twisted steel and burnt cement. The entire world had changed it seemed, in only a matter of seconds.

For a while, Gabriel stood, unsure if where to begin his search for the bus station, unsure if he could trust the apparition from the alley, unsure of what was going on all together. When he did finally move he moved slowly, first testing the grating, then stepping out onto it gently. It held as good as the ground from the world before would have, so he continued on with renewed speed, not wanting to encounter anything that might inhabit this nightmarish mockery of the world he had just begun to vaguely remember.

As he walked, he looked for any sign that he was drawing nearer to his destination, but found only rusted metal grating and burnt cement. After a while he began running, and immediately tripped over something on the ground. When he turned to examine the obstacle that had impeded his progress, he had to choke back a sudden surge of nausea. A corpse lay there at his feet, arms and legs sprawled at odd angles, as if they had been snapped like twigs. The corpse was unidentifiable, as most of the skin had been shredded and torn away. The face was gone, and a skull with pulpy bits of ragged flesh sill attached to it grinned up at him. When he studied the ground around the corpse, the dim light allowed Gabriel to follow a trail of blood to a nearby wall.

On the wall there was a message, scrawled in the corpse's blood. 

Gabriel read the macabre words to himself. "The dead hand points the way to the prophet. Beware those who aren't what they seem. If demon you do defeat, salvation shall you meet. Hurry while there is time." When he returned to the lifeless husk that had once owned the blood that was used to write the message he had read, Gabriel noticed something he hadn't noticed before. The right arm of the corpse seemed to be pointing to something; the arm extended fully, the hand closed into a fist with a single finger extended into the darkness.

He debated following the directions of the blood message, but the decision was made for him when a familiar howl of fury filled the air nearby. Gabriel ran as fast as his legs would take him, not caring what lay in front of him, only thinking about the beast that had hounded him for so long since his awakening in front of the massive cathedral. He ran until he could no longer run, and when he felt he had escaped, he sagged against the wall, and nearly feinted from the exertion. When he looked up again, he saw a woman.

She stood with her back to him, and when he called out to her she didn't respond. "Hey, who are you? Can you tell me how to get to the bus station? Are you okay? Do you need help?" Gabriel walked to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She spun around quickly, and Gabriel shot back in terror. What he saw first were the eyes, the same flaming redness of The Crucifix Demon's eyes. Then the face caught his attention, a twisted mass of ruined flesh. Teeth glinted in the dimness, long sharp teeth, teeth that reminded him of a shark. The body seemed to twist at strange joints. The arms and legs were disproportionate to the body, and both hands were tipped with long, brutal claws. Gabriel backed away, until the wall behind him stopped him from backing away any further. He searched for the gun and found it just in time to remember he was out of ammunition for it. He looked frantically for anything to use as a weapon against the abomination that stalked closer and closer to him. When it was close enough, the creature raised its long arms and brought them down with enough force to tear gouges in the concrete where Gabriel had been standing. Gabriel scrambled away from the demon woman, and nearly fell into the abyss. It seemed that the path he had been on to this point had disappeared, and the void gaped beneath. The creature was drawing near again when Gabriel saw a scrap of metal piping, a few feet long, lying near the edge of the precipice that had opened so suddenly. He grabbed it greedily and turned to face the demon woman.

When she raised her arms to attack, Gabriel ducked under them and moved close to her body. He used an upward thrust to drive the jagged end of the metal pipe deep under her ribcage, and stepped back as her body crumbled and lay twitching, surrounded by a growing pool of blood that seeped quietly through the gaps in metal grating. Suddenly a vision flashed before Gabriel's eyes. A vision of a man charging toward him, holding a sword, then the man was on the ground, begging for mercy, and then he lay in a pool of blood, like the demon he had just killed. When the vision ended, Gabriel stood once again in the world that he had been in before exiting the alley, the demon woman was gone, and cold rain was falling in sheets.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

The bus station stood only a few yards away from where Gabriel had reentered the real world. The sudden changes between worlds were disorienting, and it took Gabriel more than a few moments to regain his hold over reality. The demon woman from the world of rusted steel was gone, and no evidence remained that she had ever even been there at all, which meant that Gabriel was once again unarmed. Gabriel remembered the alley apparition, and ran to the huge double-door that dominated the front of the station. He froze in sickened silence when he reached the doors however, for on the door, in big letters written in blood, were the words 'DO NOT ENTER'. Gabriel tried the doors, and cursed under his breath as they rattled, but didn't open.

Determined to continue on, Gabriel searched the entire perimeter, until he found an emergency exit in the back of the building. He stood in front of it for a moment, taking it and its surroundings. The doorframe stood empty, the door had been ripped away, and lay crumpled on the ground a few feet away. Gabriel wondered silently to himself about who, or _what_, could accomplish such a feat. He hesitated for only a moment, and then decided that a creepy building was better that the cold rain that he had endured for such a long time since waking in front of the massive cathedral. 

He entered the long hallway that connected the emergency exit to the main lobby. Gabriel cursed his wet clothes as he walked along the hallway, and shivered, realizing that the rainy night outside was warmer than the air inside the station. A pair of bathrooms stood a few yards down the hall; beyond them was the main lobby. Gabriel came around one last and entered the lobby.

He recoiled in horror at what he saw.

Bodies lay in piles across the floor of the lobby; all of them had been skinned. Bloody flesh assaulted Gabriel from all corners of the room, as the masses of skinless bodies seemed to flow together, making it impossible to determine how many had been slaughtered. Gabriel stood in a horrified stupor, and was suddenly immersed in a resurfacing memory. Grass filled his vision, tall and green. Among the blades of grass were bodies, dressed in green uniforms. The similarity of the scenes was unmistakable. He was holding a rifle in his hands, and the pulsing _whup-whup-whup _of a helicopter could be heard overhead. When he came out of the flashback, he was standing over a sink in the bathroom, vomiting.

When he felt better, he glanced into the mirror above the sink, and saw his own face. Gabriel was a tall man with a medium build; he was dressed in black, and had a long overcoat on. His hair was brown-black, and was shoulder length. He had dark eyes, and a thin face and lips. After he finished admiring himself in the mirror, he stood and tried to walk. His legs were wobbly, and he put a hand on the door of the bathroom stall next to him, and nearly fell as the door squeaked open, and again he stood in shocked silence, choking back bile as his senses took in the scene that lay beyond the stall door.

A body was inside the stall, impaled on a long pike, and it was skinned and splayed, entrails hung from it all the way to the floor, where they piled together like bloody garbage. On the wall behind the tortured body, another blood message was scrawled. Gabriel read the message aloud to himself. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Suddenly, the lights went out, and the bathroom was plunged into darkness. Gabriel groped his way to the light switch, and when he flipped it on, a much weaker light than before illuminated the room, and Gabriel stood in terrified silence. The walls, which only moments before had been made of brick, were now made of rusted steel, the tile floor had become stained concrete, and the sinks had become bloodstained metal basins. The only thing that remained the same in this hellish transmutation was the splayed body, still impaled on the steel pike. Gabriel took a deep breath and exited the room, returning to hell for the second time since his awakening.

The hall to the main lobby was filled with the now familiar sound of screeching metal but the sound was so loud that Gabriel had to cover his ears until he grew used to it. He was relieved to see that although the appearance of the world had changed, the layout had not. The main lobby still stood only a few yards to the right, and the emergency exit was a few yards in the opposite direction. Knowing what awaited in the lobby, Gabriel decided to check back at the exit. 

The hall seemed to stretch away from him as he walked, and it seemed as though it took longer for the exit door to become visible to him. The dim light made it hard for him to see, and when he reached the door he stepped through, and nearly fell into the abyss. When he was back on solid 'ground' he stared out into the blackness. It seemed as though the world had been ripped away from the building, leaving him stranded. Gabriel cursed again, and turned and began walking down the hall, working his way back to the death filled lobby.

The closer he got to the lobby the louder the screeching sound became, and the air grew thicker, and the smell grew worse. Gabriel pulled the gun from his coat pocket and checked it, _still_ empty. He felt foolish, checking the weapon, as if it would refill itself magically. He searched for another weapon as he continued down the hall to the lobby, but found nothing that would be suitable. He stopped at the bathroom, and an idea sprung to mind that caused him to enter and move to the impaled corpse in the stall. It remained nearly the same as in the normal world, but the flesh appeared more decayed in the industrial nightmare world he was in now. The pike stood, still, and when he inspected it closely, he found that it was merely set in a small hole in the floor, and moved rather easily. Now he set about to do the less agreeable job, removing the corpse from the pike. 

He placed his hands under the arms of the splayed corpse, and lifted. It slid up, and off, easier than Gabriel had thought it would. Once he had finished, he held the long pike in his hands, testing its balance, weight, and strength. When he was satisfied with his newly acquired weapon, he turned and walked to the bathroom door. A rustling noise caused him to turn on his heels as his hand reached for the door handle, and he gaped at what stood before him. The corpse that had been impaled on the pike _stood_ before him, as if it was waiting for some word of appreciation for the new weapon. Its mouth moved slowly, and a raspy voice fought its way from between the mutilated lips. "Beware the one who takes our skins, you are close to the Prophet, and the Beast will do what he can to impede your progress further." The corpse, finished speaking, and then crumpled to the floor. Gabriel exited the exited the bathroom with a confused look in his eyes, and continued on to the lobby. When he reached it, he became witness to an atrocity unlike anything he could have imagined. 

The lobby appeared nothing like the lobby of the normal world. The room Gabriel stood in now would have dwarfed even the cathedral that he had stumbled into upon his awakening. The ceiling wasn't visible from the floor, and the far wasn't either, even though he could easily see a football field's distance or more. Chains hung from wherever the ceiling was, and at the end of each chain hung a corpse skewered by a giant hook. Gabriel tried to count the corpses, but lost count at a hundred and fifty. Each corpse had been skinned and eviscerated; empty husks remained as brutal monuments to the atrocity that had occurred here. Gabriel stood for a long time, unable to move in sight of the _slaughter_ that stood before him.

His first steps into the gigantic room of death were wobbly, and he kept his eyes on the floor to keep from vomiting. He jumped as an arm bumped against his shoulder. The screeching stopped, but was replaced by an eerie _drip-drip-drip_. He wiped at his shoulder as a drop of liquid landed on it. In the dim light, he could just barely make out the red smear on the palm of his hand, and shuddered involuntarily. The screeching metallic sound began again, lasted for a few minutes, died, and started again before Gabriel saw any change in the room.

As he walked though, he found that some of the hanging corpses were still _fresh_. Blood still flowed freely from the empty abdomens, and coated the rest of their bodies in a red sheen. The screech died once more, dead silence returned to the massive room. The dripping sound grew together into a single sound, like the rainfall in the real world he had been so rudely pulled from, and Gabriel fought to keep from turning and running as far as his legs could carry him. Ahead, during the short bursts of silence, Gabriel heard voices. 

He tried to make out the conversation, but only understood small bits. There were two voices, one low and throaty and the other high and raspy. They seemed to be arguing, the deep one told the high one to "speed up, The Master said it would be anytime now." The high voice asked what they were to do, the deep replied that they were to capture it, not kill. The high voice sounded displeased. Gabriel couldn't see the speakers, but they sounded very _unpleasant_ to him. 

The screeching erupted again, and when it stopped, Gabriel heard the voices, again, except this time they were right in front of him. He ducked behind one of the hanging corpses as the deep voice boomed out over the vast room. "How many does this make Ich?"  Gabriel saw the deep voiced one standing over one of the corpses. The gigantic being was terrifying. The disproportionate body was covered in pale, twisted skin, the tiny head sat far too low on the chest, almost as if it were melting into its body. The lags were longer than Gabriel's, but still far too short for the rest of the giant. The arms were longer than the body, and dragged the ground as it moved. Gabriel didn't see the other speaker until it _crawled_ over the giant's shoulder, and perched atop the mountain of flesh. The smaller creature was more reptilian in appearance than its gigantic companion; large eyes dominated its face. It had a large mouth full of needle teeth that were silvery, almost metallic in appearance. The smaller creature, Ich, reached into a pouch around its waist and produced a piece of parchment.

"Two hundred and thirty-eight. The Master is treating us well today Gar." The giant, Gar, handed Ich a newly acquired skin, and Ich disappeared over his shoulders for a long moment. When he returned, the skin was gone. "Which one do we harvest next?" Gar stood at full height, and reached for a corpse that hung overhead. Gabriel noticed quickly than the not only did the body still posses its skin, but it was alive. Gabriel watched in horror as Gar slammed the helpless person to the ground and held him, as Ich produced a long cutting tool, and began to skin him alive. The screeching sound began again, and Gabriel understood for the first time what it was…it was the screaming of people being skinned alive.

When the screams ended, Ich finished his sadistic act and added another skin to the growing collection, cataloged it and turned to scurry back over Gar's shoulders. "Wait Ich, put that one up front, I'm starting to get a little thin around my chest." Gabriel watched as Ich moved to Gar's upper chest, produced a sickle-shaped needle from the pouch around his waist, and proceeded to sew the skin to Gar's body. Gabriel shivered uncontrollably as he watched this demonic tailor fashion a piece of once living flesh into skin for the giant. The light changed, and Gar's body was suddenly illuminated, and Gabriel saw the mesh of human skin that covered him.  Amidst the stitches, human faces melted into and out of a patchwork of death, silent mouths that testified to the atrocities of this hell. 

An invisible force pushed Gabriel. 

By the time he regained his footing and was prepared to run, it was too late. Gar had him by his throat, and he squeezed gently, asserting his superior strength. Ich scuttled down the arm, and was staring into Gabriel's eyes before he could blink. "Is this the one The Master spoke of Gar, or is it another sheep thrown to the wolves? Can we have his fair skin too?" Ich's tongue shot from between his lips, flicked in the air, and disappeared back into his mouth. Gabriel shuddered at the disgusting creature that was leering at him.

"I believe this is the one, Ich. Either way, we can't chance it yet, at least not until The Master has seen him. We'll hold him until Th—" Gar screamed as Gabriel drove the pike into the soft flesh of his underarm and dropped to the floor. Gabriel jumped back, putting as much room between him and the giant as possible. Ich moved to the wound and began stitching it up, stopping the torrent of gore that had spilled from the gaping wound. Gabriel attacked, slashing with the pike, and tore a long wound along Gar's stomach. Gore spilled to the floor, and Gar writhed in pain as Ich stitched the wound up. 

A plan was forming in Gabriel's mind as he watched the pair.

Gabriel moved swiftly, ducking under Gar's massive arm, and slashing out at his chest in one smooth motion. When Ich moved to repair the tear in the skin, Gabriel knocked him clear of his giant companion, he landed a few feet away, and Gabriel continued to slash at Gar, turning his torso into a checker board of bloody gashes. Something strange happened as Gar bled, his overall size decreased, as if he were shrinking with each ounce of gore that leaked from his horrific body. Gabriel turned in time to swipe Ich from the air as he leapt to attack with the skinning tool, and held him as Gar drained, and turned into a mass of dead flesh, bones were the only things supporting the mesh of human skin that was left over from the gargantuan demon. Ich began sobbing as he took in the sight of the giant's lifeless husk.

As Ich sobbed, Gabriel began to feel sorry for the pitiful creature. "What did you do to my friend? Why? Why?" he beat his fists into the ground as he cried, and Gabriel contemplated trying to comfort him, but his sympathy melted away as the little demon spun around and attacked him viciously. "I'll gut you for what you've done! I don't care if The Master splays my carcass and puts it on display for all to see!" Gabriel dodged several wild swipes from Ich's blade and swiped at him several times unsuccessfully. They fought for several minutes, neither gaining an inch on the other. Ich became frustrated at Gabriel's silence, and screamed, "why do you not say something murderer? Speak!"

"What do you want me to say, that I'm sorry I killed your_ friend_ in self defense? What should I have done, let your _Master_ have me, or let you have my skin." Gabriel attacked, blinded by rage. Ich fought hard, but was no match for the new found strength of Gabriel. When the berserker's rage ended, Ich lay skewered to the ground, and Gabriel stood, horrified by what he had just done, but strangely proud of himself, which served to horrify him even more. _Am I no better than these monsters_, He thought. From that point on, Gabriel was changed. 

For better or worse…he didn't know.

After a few long moments of self-analysis, Gabriel lifted the pike and turned to find an exit out of the hellish lobby, and was immediately knocked from his feet by the same invisible force that had exposed him to Ich and Gar. He scrambled to his feet and stood; ready to fight the unseen threat, but he found only darkness. Suddenly he felt incredibly exposed, as if he were under a magnifying glass, being examined by some unholy scientist. It seemed as if the darkness itself was watching him, waiting for the appropriate moment to strike him down. "Show yourself!" Gabriel yelled in frustration.

He was swatted down again, this time from behind. When he turned to defend himself, the darkness _moved_, changed shape, and folded in on him. As he was lifted from his feet, a shape began to appear, a face, one that should inspire love, now twisted into hate, a mouth of razor sharp spears, the flowing mane of thorns, the Crucifix Demon. It held him by the throat, its bony fingers pinching the soft flesh. The demon moved forward, eyes locked on Gabriel, slowing spanning the entire width of the room. Then the demon stopped, and Gabriel thought for sure that he would kill him.

The demon hurled him into the far wall. 

He hit the wall with a loud crack, and lost the feeling in his arms and legs. He didn't even notice that he was suspended in the air until his head rolled to the left and he saw the barbed wire restraint that held his wrist in place. Blood flowed freely from the wounds that had been opened there, and he was beginning to feel cold. But his attention was ripped away from his bleeding wrists as the pike he had wielded against Ich and Gar was driven into his abdomen, and he watched as the Crucifix Demon twisted in gleefully into his gut. He could taste blood in his mouth, and he felt his heartbeat, as it grew slower, and slower. The world seemed to twist away from him and Gabriel could see his own body, crucified on a rusty steel cross. Everything moved slowly, the Crucifix Demon stood straight, and his mouth began to move, and a voice filled Gabriel's mind.

"Bend to my will Gabriel, and I can deliver you from this pain. If you refuse, hen you shall die." The voice boomed, and seemed to echo in his skull. He tried to answer, but he couldn't make his body function correctly. 

The world suddenly went dark, and Gabriel heard his heart beat one last time, then silence.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Elisa Parker huddled in a corner of what had once been her classroom. Now it was merely a mockery of its former self, devoid of anything other than bloodstained metal grating and twisted desks. She had fallen asleep after a test, and when she woke, she found herself in the twisted world she now inhabited. She had sat there for nearly an hour, rocking back and forth, more scared than she has ever been in her entire seventeen years. When she finally found the courage to stand, she did so on wobbly legs. She had tried calling out before, but hadn't heard anything but her own beating heart. Now she stepped to the door of the classroom, and turned the knob slowly.

An oppressive heat poured from the doorway as it slowly creaked open. Elisa took a single step out into the hallway, and immediately felt that something was wrong. She felt as though she was being watched, and she felt a _presence_, a _something_ that seemed to watch her, and it made her very uncomfortable. She crept out away from the door, then slowly, nervously, walked down the long hallway. After a few moments, her confidence increased, and her curiosity forced her to wander the hall, looking everywhere for a clue as to what had happened, and why she was the only person around to witness it. She tried calling out again, but silence was once again her only answer.

_Something moved behind her._

She spun around, just in time to see something duck into a doorway a few yards behind her. In the dim light, she was unsure what it was she saw, but she was certain she saw _something_. As if to confirm her suspicions, the door that the _something_ had vanished into slammed shut.

"Hello?" she called weakly. No answer. "Hello?" she called again, more boldly this time than the last. A muffled yelp came from down the hall, from inside the door that had just slammed shut. Elisa ran as fast as she could, wanting to find whoever had made that sound, to have someone's company in this hellish nightmare she was being forced to endure.

The door, marked men's room, opened very easily. Elisa practically jumped over the threshold, but was immediately taken aback by what she saw inside the room. The bathroom floor was made of stone, unlike the metal grating outside, and it was covered in a thick coating of blood. It was everywhere, but it seemed to be coming from the last stall in a row that lined the wall to her left.  

She moved cautiously, ready to run at the slightest hint of danger, until she reached the stall door. Her hand gripped the handle weakly, and she pulled. The door swung open, much harder than she thought it would, and she lost her balance and fell back onto the bloodstained floor. She nearly vomited at the touch of the warm sticky fluid that coated her hands. She stood, and wiped the blood off on her pant legs. Then she turned back to the stall, and nearly fainted when she did.

A body was in the stall.

That was all her mind accepted at first, but as it recovered from the initial shock, more details forced their way into her skull. The body appeared to be male, it wasn't recognizable, and pieces of flesh were torn haphazardly from it. It was held in place by hundreds of hooked chains that were attached to the stall, and a few of them went to the roof above. The corpse was opened from the throat to the groin, and the organs were strewn about the stall floor, and some hung from the chains. The body cavity was completely empty, as were its eye sockets, its nasal cavity, and the gaping hole where its bottom jaw would be.

Elisa, confronted with such an atrocity, could do nothing but stand there, tears streaming down her cheeks.

After a moment of silent grieving for whoever the poor soul had been, her insatiable curiosity kicked in and she was compelled to investigate the gutted corpse. She stood, her face inches from the ravaged face, searching for any clue as to what had happened to cause such a horrible death.

_The corpse moved._

Its hand tore free from a chain and grabbed at Elisa's arm, pulling her close with surprising strength. "Help me Elisa, it hurts so much. Help…" she knew the voice immediately, it was her boyfriend, Mike voice.

"Mike! Oh my God! What happened!" She screamed, but the corpse sank back into the slack position she had found it in and she was left alone in the blood-covered bathroom, terrified out of her mind, and sobbing until she lost her breath.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Elisa had been searching for an hour nonstop before she found a way out of the school. The stairwell seemed safe, but since leaving the bathroom, she felt as though she was in danger everywhere. When she finally made it to the front lobby, she was so happy she didn't even notice the bloodstained metal grating that made up the walls and floors anymore, she didn't even notice the giant beast that was guarding the front doors to what had been her school until she _ran_ into it.

It might have been a dog once, if dogs ever got to be the size of cars.

Its skin, or what was left of it, was hairless. The closest thing it had to hair were the bony fragments that stuck out from its back. Its head was as large as her torso, and its legs were as tall as she was. Its teeth were short, but incredibly sharp looking, and each of its feet ended in thick, brutal claws. It growled from deep in its chest, and stepped toward her. She was frozen in terror, unable to do anything other than mutter to herself.

"No, no, no, no, no…" she said, over and over.

The beast reared back and howled, a howl that reverberated throughout the building, and shook Elisa as hard as a physical blow. The howl forced her to move, and she spun around and ran as fast as she could, searching for anywhere possible to hide from the monster that had already begun to chase her. She passed a door made of what appeared to be copper, and when she tried the handle, it turned easily. She jumped through just in time to escape the monster's crushing jaws.

The room was small and dark, and it stunk. She searched for a light source, and flipped a switch next to the door. A feeble light shone from a naked bulb hanging from a thin chain in the middle of the room. When she had some light, albeit a very dim one, she scanned the room for anything she could use. The room contained very little in the way of furnishings, and it looked like a prison cell, or something similar. A large table dominated its center, and a dingy, stained sheet covered the table like a small tent. She walked to the table, and pulled the sheet off of it.

She regretted it instantly.

A body was hidden under the sheet, with an axe sticking out of its chest, which explained the way the sheet had been covering it. She stood for a moment, speechless at the sight of yet another body, the second one she had seen in such a short time. Then an idea struck her, and she said a quick prayer for the departed, and reached for the handle of the axe.

_BOOM. _The creature had found her hiding place.

The door bulged inward, crunching loudly. _One more hit like that_, she thought, _and it'll be in here with me._ She rushed forward, standing next to the door, at a safe distance to avoid the shrapnel as it exploded inward. _BOOM_. The door blew inward, and the creature entered the room and stood, head moving from side to side, searching for her. She moved with lightning speed, through the door, and down the hall. She glanced over her shoulder, and a shock of excited joy washed over her as she saw the beast in pursuit. 

Her plan was working, now came the hard part.

She slowed her pace, and glanced back again. The beast stopped for a split second, and then launched itself into the air. She had rehearsed this part in her mind several times; she fell to the ground, and pushed back with her hands, moving her body so that the creature landed in front of her. Then, with the axe, she hooked its front left leg, and used its own momentum to pull its legs out from under it. She stood quickly, still holding the axe, and hopped toward the beast's head.

She stood over the beast's head, raised the axe high, and let it fall hard.

The beast squealed, and thick blood poured from the gaping wound between its eyes, but it still tried to stand. She chopped again, this time nearly splitting its skull in half. She chopped again, and again, and again, until a thin film of blood covered her forearms. She chopped until her arms were sore, and then she rested. When she finally surfaced from the haze that had covered her during her chopping frenzy, she felt disgust for the abomination that she had encountered, and even more disgust for what she had done to it.

For a long while she sat, breathing heavily, unable to move from the exertion. Then she stood, and walked confidently to the double doors that led to front courtyard of her once peaceful school. She stopped briefly at the door, as a wave of nausea passed over her.

A message was written across them, in blood.

"Look behind you," Elisa read aloud, and was startled by how loud her voice seemed in the empty entrance way. She stood for a moment, debating whether she should indeed turn, or bolt through the doors and face whatever danger might inhabit the hell outside. Once again, her curiosity won over her sense of fear and she slowly turned to see what new threat or atrocity waited to assault her.

_Nothing._

There was absolutely nothing behind her. She could have laughed, if she hadn't been so utterly afraid of whatever was playing this unwholesome joke of her. She spun around to open the doors, and fell into the arms of a person standing in front of her. She pulled away in surprise, and then instantly recognized the face of the person who had surprised her so rudely. "Mike!" she screamed, "I thought you were dead!" she embraced the young man tightly. "You scared the hell out of me, don't you ever do that again." She sobbed into his shoulder, wanting nothing more than to stay there in his strong embrace for all eternity.

Her joy was shattered when he whispered into her ear.

"Oh God it hurts Elisa, help me it hurts…it…hurts…so…bad…" The strangled words that escaped his lips were drenched in pain, and it made Elisa hurt to hear it. She immediately shot back, and was floored by what she saw happening to her boyfriend. He blinked, and a thin trail of bright red blood flowed from the corner of his eye, like a single tear. Then the blood came faster, and in greater amounts, soon blood was pouring from everywhere. His eyes disappeared behind torrents of red fluid, and when he opened his mouth, a garbled cry fought its way out amidst a river of red.

Then something else began to happen. As Elisa backed away, Mike advanced, but as he advanced, large chunks of flesh dropped from his face and arms. In a matter of seconds, he was reduced to nothing more than a shambling pile of gore. Elisa wasn't aware that she was screaming until her voice cracked and she stumbled over the demon beast she had slain with the axe. Mike was still advancing and Elisa was now desperate to put some distance between her and this, this _thing_ that shambled after her. The axe came into her peripheral vision and she instinctively grabbed at it. She stood defiantly brandishing the weapon and summoning the courage to stand against this disturbing new threat.

"Stay back, you, whatever the hell you are!" she made a threatening mock swing with the axe, and still the walking corpse advanced. "I'm not kidding you freak, take one more step and I'll put this thing between your eyes." She swung the axe in an arc, aiming for the skull of the fiend, and heard a sick _CRACK_ as the blunted blade made contact. 

The effect was immediate, but nothing like what Elisa had expected. 

Instead of crumpling to the ground like she thought anything would do when its skull was cleaved in half, the walking corpse burst into flames. For several minutes it burned, and when the last cinders went out the corpse, and the axe, were gone.

Elisa was know frantic, and tore at the doors, not caring if they were locked or if any messages were left for her on them, all she wanted was to leave, and the sooner the better. She stopped, breathless for a moment as she stepped out onto the walkway that led from the front door of the school to the street. The world outside the school was the same as always, even the sheets of rain that had been pouring before her ill-fated nap. _So what was all that about in the school,_ She thought, _what the hell is going on here?_ She turned and pulled at the handles of the doors, anxious to see if the school had returned to normal as well, and found that the doors, the same ones she had just come through, were locked.

She pounded on the door to no avail. She looked into the small window, and for a split second she thought she saw something. It appeared to be a man but she couldn't tell. She yelled to the man, but he vanished quickly, making her think he had never even been there. So there she stood, alone again, in the cold rain, unable to decide where to go from there. 

_Home._

And so she started off, on her way to the only place she felt would be secure.

***

Gabriel felt an intense pain run throughout his entire being, and as he slowly regained consciousness, he became aware that he was hanging from something sturdy. Then the recollections of the events before he blacked out jarred him into awareness. His eyes shot open, and he expected to see the familiar visage of the Crucifix Demon, but instead he saw a man. A very thin man, covered in rags from head to toe, a thick bandage covered his eyes. He stood for a long time, silently scrutinizing Gabriel.

Gabriel glanced around, and realized that he was still in the cavernous room with the hanging bodies, he surveyed himself, and noticed the wounds on his wrists, and the pike he had wielded against Ich and Gar, still deeply embedded in his abdomen. _I…I should be dead,_ He thought gravely, then he turned his attention to the raggedy man. "Who are you old man, another demon sent to torture my already ravaged body?" he asked bitterly. A dry laugh welled up within him, and he found himself laughing at his own misery, unable to do anything else.

The man looked at Gabriel's, and even though the bandages covered them, his hidden eyes were enough to silence him. 

"No, Gabriel," said he, "I am the prophet you were sent to find."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Elisa stood, drenched to the bone, in front of the familiar blue house she had lived in her whole life. She knew the layout of her town, a suburb on the outskirts of a larger city, rather well, and found it easy to get from one point to the other quickly. Now she stood, just staring at her house, with a sudden feeling of uncertainty.

_Something isn't right here…but what is it?_

She had a bad feeling; a nagging that hadn't left her since she had awoken in the 'twisted' world, as she called it. Now it grew worse, and her home, a place that should feel the most secure of any place imaginable, felt so alien and unreal that she debated whether she should enter it or run in the opposite direction. Once again her curiosity fought her sense of fear, and eventually won.

She approached the garage, and entered through a door beside the metal shutter.

Her mother's car sat in its usual place, and all seemed normal. But the feeling of unease still persisted, even with no visual threat present. She moved through the garage slowly, prepared for anything that could possibly jump out at her or attack her. She opened a door to her kitchen still on her guard for any threat, and glided into her living room, where she froze.

There were crimson stains in the white carpet, in the shape of footprints.

From the shape and size, they appeared to be women's shoes. "Mom!" she called frantically, "are you here, are you hurt?" No answer. She called again, and the dead silence of the house absorbed the sound, no answer. She followed the footprints, through the living room, down the hall, up the stairs, past her own room, and to the door of her parent's room. 

She stopped, and stared at the green door.

The path of crimson footprints ended a few feet away from the door; instead the entire carpet was stained red. The door itself had more than one bloody handprint on it, and the knob was slick with it. She no longer cared though; she had to find her mother soon.

She burst through the door, and found her mother, or what was left of her. She fell to her knees unable to stomach what she was seeing. The only recognizable feature left in the pile of gore was a crushed hand, wearing her mother's wedding ring. She cried, long coughing sobs, unable to think of anything but her poor, poor mother, and the pain she must have felt before she died.

When she looked up again, the tiny crucifix her parents kept caught her eye, and she immediately began to pray. For a long while she prayed, every prayer she could ever remember, every one her mother had ever taught her, until she knew no more to pray. Then she crossed herself, and said aloud "Amen."

The walls began to shake, and the crucifix burst into flames.

She stood, and prepared to run, but before she did, she bent and removed the ring from her mother's ravaged remains, slipped it onto her finger, and stood. Just as she did, an arm burst from the wall where the crucifix had hung and grabbed her by the throat. Suddenly she was suspended in the air, and was forced to watch in horror as something large tore its way through the wall. Once it was free, she saw it for what it was…an abomination.

It stood nearly ten feet tall, with long, disproportionate limbs, it had a mane of thorns that started at its fore head and flowed all the way down the length of its back. When she looked upon its face, she saw something familiar, though she couldn't place it immediately. _The picture above Mom's bed,_ She thought,_ the one of Jesus praying._

_What bitter irony,_ She though, to die in the hands of a demon with the face of The Savior, and as its grip on her throat tightened she had one final thought, _what bitter irony indeed_.

***

"Are you going to let me down from here or not?" Gabriel asked impatiently. He had been hanging from the cross for more than an hour, and the 'prophet' had yet to tell him anything.

"First; who are you?" The Prophet asked calmly.

"My name's Gabriel, but you knew that already, will you please let me down." The pain had dulled to a low throb, and the old man at least had the decency to pull the pike from his torn abdomen. The only discomfort came from the ache in his shoulders from hanging by his wrists. "I'm really tired of hanging by my wrists…you should try it, its very uncomfortable."

"Silence boy, I know who you are, but _who_ are you? Answer me that and I will let you down from the cross." He grew deathly quiet, and stood at Gabriel's feet, waiting for a proper answer.

"I…don't know who I am. I know some things, I knew the face the Crucifix Demon copied, and I knew that the building where I met Tyler was a church. I knew that this…_place_…is Hell. Other than that, I don't remember anything.  I don't know my real name, where I'm from, or what I'm doing here. I thought maybe you could help." Gabriel's head slumped against his chest, and he had a moment of despair unlike any he had experienced before. The Prophet merely laughed. Gabriel looked up in anger, "how dare you laugh, do you know what I've experienced? I almost died up here on this damned cross, and all you can do is laugh." He roared at the old man, his voice echoing throughout the cavernous chamber. The Prophet's head snapped to attention.

"But you did die on that cross Gabriel. How does it feel to be a dead man? If you insist on spouting angry words in my direction, you shall stay that way; you know not what I am offering you. But, since you answered the first question correctly, I will let you down…dead man." He waved his hand, the restraints snapped, and Gabriel found himself lying on his face. He pushed himself into a sitting position, and huffed angrily.

"What do you mean_ dead man_? How could I be speaking to you if I died?" He looked incredulously at the old man, who responded with a snort.

"You died, it's a simple as that. The rest will be explained in time" He chuckled as Gabriel launched himself to his feet and charged at him, he waved his hand again, and Gabriel was frozen in mid step, his fist inches from the old man's face. "You underestimate me young Gabriel, if you insist on trying to attack me, I will show you what it means for a dead man to die." With a flick of his wrist, Gabriel was thrown into the wall. "Answer me one more question; do you want to live, even if it is only to fight these demons and their master?"

 Gabriel thought for a moment, and then answered.

***

The demon brought Elisa close to its face, and howled into her ear. To Elisa, the sound changed from a deafening howl, and became a din of voices. "Bend to my will girl, I have already destroyed the rest, and will gladly destroy you if you don't. You will fail, and you will die." Elisa screamed, unable to form words, unable to think of anything but the stinking breath of the demon as it howled in her face.

"Let her go damn you!" A voice boomed throughout the house. Suddenly Elisa was flying, until she slammed into the wall over her parents' bed. She lay there for a moment, her breath knocked from her body. She lifted her throbbing head from the quilted comforter in time to see a man charge into the room and attack the demon with a blunt weapon.

He had sandy hair, with pale blue eyes. He was tall and wore the standard garb of a priest.  He bashed the demon in the head with the blunt object—a baseball bat—and shouldered it into the wall. "Run, damn it, get out of here now!" He turned for a moment to look at her, and was immediately in the demon's grasp. He fought like a madman, beating the beast until it let go, and he screamed at her again. "What are you waiting for, go!" She got to her feet quickly and ran for the door, where she turned to catch one last glimpse of the mysterious priest, and then retreated to the ground floor.

She ran from the base of the stairs, down the hall, and into her living room. There, in front of her favorite chair was her low coffee table, on which a multitude of candles were placed, each alight with a pale flame. She stopped for a moment to admire their beauty, but the sounds of the battle above reminded her of escape, so she continued on to the kitchen. She slammed the kitchen door almost off its hinges, and was immediately aware of the intense smell of natural gas. She ignored it and continued out the door to the sidewalk. Then she turned and waited to see either the mysterious priest or the demon emerge from the front door. She suddenly saw an image of the white candles in her mind, and smelled the overwhelming aroma of natural gas.

"Oh shi—" she squeaked.

The house exploded, throwing her on her back, and then each house down the line exploded, one by one, until Elisa's once peaceful neighborhood was left in ruin. She lay on the ground; covered by burnt debris, until the warm blackness of unconsciousness overtook her.

***

"Have you ever read the Book of Revelations Gabriel?" The Prophet asked solemnly.

"Yes." Gabriel said instinctively. "It says that a day would arrive when God would unleash his final judgment on the earth, and The Beast would be freed from the Pit, and would devour the sinners. The world would be destroyed, and the believers would live on in the kingdom of Heaven."

"Yes, well, often times plans of that magnitude fail in the long run. You see; _The Beast would not wait for his time_. He has freed himself from the Pit, and now has set forth to devour your world, beginning right here in this very city. If he is not stopped, there will be no earth to judge, and his next target will be the gates of Heaven themselves."

"What does this have to do with me?" Gabriel asked curiously.

"You are the only one who can defeat The Beast." The Prophet replied curtly.

"What! Me? How can I fight Satan?" Gabriel asked incredulously.

"You can't yet, but in time, you will have to." The Prophet continued, "you see Gabriel, you are no mere mortal, you never were, you are a warrior soul, forged by God himself for this specific task, the memories you have had so far, they have all been of war, and battle, correct?" Gabriel nodded in confirmation. "That is because the only thing you have ever know has been war, your eternal soul has been chained to battle since the very beginning. Your task now is simple, to defeat Satan, and cast him back into the Pit, for eternity."

Gabriel stood, dumbfounded, unable to think of any words to express the utter shock, the immense weight, of the implications laid upon him. The Prophet stepped forward, placed his hands on Gabriel's temples, and his field of vision was blacked out. Only the sound of the moving air, and his own breathing remained, as images steamed through his mind, countless births and deaths over thousands of years, countless battles, countless acts of violence, and unspeakable acts committed by wicked men over the lifetime of a planet. It took a moment, but then Gabriel understood what he was seeing.

The prophet was showing him his life.

***

_What happened?_

Elisa felt the damp air on her face, and opened her eyes slowly. Then her memory returned.

_It's gone…all of it._

She pulled herself free of the debris that lay across her legs, while she had lain there for some indeterminable time, and got to her feet shakily. She must not have been out long, because she had a gaping wound on her forearm that still oozed blood. She looked at the scene in front her, feeling as if her heart had been ripped out. 

Everything was gone.

Her house, and every house near had been wiped clean from the face of the earth, and nothing remained but charred dirt and debris. She lost her balance and sat silently sobbing. Then she noticed a strange thing.

The rain had stopped.

It had rained for nearly a month, even before she awoke in the nightmare world, and now it seemed as if it had never rained at all, instead there was a thick fog, a fog that hung low to the ground and obscured her vision. She found that, sitting amongst the destruction around her, she would have preferred the rain to the eerie fog any day.

Slowly, stiffly, she stood once more and began walking. She had no idea where she was going though, only that she wanted desperately to find a normal person, so she wouldn't have to face the nightmare alone anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"How am I to fight without weapons, my gun's empty." Gabriel said, still dazed from the weight of a lifetime's memories falling down on him.

"Your mortal weapons are useless against the Crucifix Demon, are they not?" The Prophet held his hand out and Gabriel's gun flew from his pocket into his hand, and he checked it for ammunition as if he had used one everyday of his life. When he was satisfied he returned the weapon to Gabriel's hand. "This weapon will not even scratch the Crucifix Demon, for he exists only in this realm, but he has the ability to manifest a shadow form of himself in the mortal world, and even if you were to fight him in this realm, such a weapon as this would still be useless against him, he is much too powerful. However," he paused, "this weapon will devastate other demons, which do not have such power, also, they exist in only one realm, this one. But, if you do not stop The Beast soon, the two realms will become one, and your world will be overrun by these foul beasts. Likewise, as the corruption of your world worsens, living things left on your world will corrupt into demons. It may have begun already."

"How can I fight the Crucifix Demon then?" Gabriel asked impatiently.

"When I return you to the world of the living, you must find an antique shop called "The Golden Lizard", there you will find a weapon that will harm even the blasphemous Crucifix Demon. Either way, the time draws near for you to return, there is still one more thing you must do, find a girl named Elisa, and guard her with your life." The Prophet made a few movements and gestures with his hands, and before Gabriel could say another word, he was surrounded by light, and then blackness devoured him.

***

Cold barely described how Elisa felt as she walked down the lonely street where her neighborhood had once been. She had felt a range of emotions, but the coldness overtook them all, and not just emotionally, she was literally freezing. She needed a jacket, and she knew where to go to find one.  There was a small army surplus store a few miles from her house, which was the closest place she knew of without walking all the way to the city. 

She had been walking for more than an hour when she heard the first moans.

They came from an alley way a few yards in front of her and to the left. At first she thought that someone might be injured and unable to call out, so she jogged over to the entrance of the alley and called out. When an answering moan came back to her, she made her way deeper into the darkness. Every few moments, she called out and was answered by a thin wail. She grew closer and closer to the source of the sound, until it was so close that she was confused as to why she couldn't find it.

She looked all around, and called several times, and tried to pinpoint the moaner, until she was so frustrated that she considered abandoning the search and continuing on her quest for a jacket.

_THUMP._

She whirled around, and found a mutilated corpse lying on the ground at her feet. She immediately began analyzing its features, and was disturbed that such brutality no longer disgusted her, and she attributed it to her being dropped suddenly into a nightmare, and figured that it was probably better in the long run to get used to such sights, if she was to survive. She bent, and ran her hand over the mutilated flesh. _Still warm,_ She thought, _must have died recently._ She flipped the corpse over, and examined its front side. Much like the hanging corpse at the school, this one had been disemboweled. Its eyes were gone, and most of the flesh had been torn from its bones. 

She stood and looked up, trying to find from where the body had fallen. She saw a fire escape, normal for the small apartment buildings that lined the streets in that area of town. Then her eyes caught on an open window on the second floor. There was a streak of blood on the windowsill, and she inferred that the body had fallen from there. _But how,_ She thought, _dead bodies don't just jump from open windows._ She noticed a low hanging escape ladder, and reached for it. After a few tries, she caught it and pulled it down. And gripped the cold metal as she hefted herself up it.

Once she was up, she quickly ascended the fire escape and came to the window. The curtain was drawn, and she couldn't see in, so she boldly stepped through. Once inside, she smelled thick coppery smell of blood, and stood in awe, for it seemed as though hundreds of thousands of gallons of it had been spilt onto the floor of the apartment. The entire floor was awash in a sea of red, and her shoes made sick squelching noises as she walked across it. After a few moments, the initial shock wore off, and she began to hunt for who, or _what_, could have spilt that much blood, and thrown a mutilated body from the second story of an apartment building.

She found it much sooner than she intended.

She had walked into the bedroom, and had knocked over a small lamp. Suddenly a loud moan erupted from a partially open bathroom door across from the entrance to the bedroom. She quickly jogged over to it, and flung it open, and was immediately in the arms of a shambling, moaning demon from hell.

***

Gabriel stood, and stretched his stiff body. He immediately noticed the heavy pack on his back, and took a moment to straighten the straps that went over his shoulders. He had awoken in another alley, but in an entirely different area of town. He glanced around in all directions, and was surprised when The Prophet's voice spoke out loud, inside his skull.

"I have placed you as near to the girl as I could, the rest is up to you. You will find that I have prepared for you some ammunition for your gun." Gabriel thought of the pack, "I trust it will be enough to deal with any…_obstacles_ you may encounter. Now go, while The Beast is unaware you are still alive." Then the voice faded and was gone.

"Back into the breach again, my friend." Gabriel said, and laughed bitterly. "I don't think you could at least point me in the right direction, could you?" he yelled, but only silence answered him. "Guess no—"

A high-pitched human scream shot through the silence close by.

Gabriel ran hard in the direction of the scream, pumping his legs as herd as he physically could. He kept running, and passed several small shops as he exited the alley into the streets. He entered another alleyway as the scream erupted again, and stopped at a fire escape, and glanced down at the corpse at the foot of the ladder down from it. The scream was coming from a second story window. In a flash, he was up the ladder, and through the window, and then he ran across a blood soaked carpet and to a door at end of a short hallway, and into a medium sized master bedroom. The scream had come from a young girl, when Gabriel saw what she had been screaming for; he immediately and instinctively pulled his gun.

She was pinned to the ground, and a demon held her down, preparing to bite her throat.

***

The demon's heavy body held Elisa tightly to the floor.

She was unable to do anything more than watch as its silvery teeth parted and it prepared to bite her throat, killing her.

_BOOM._

The demon crumpled to the floor, its head nothing more than a bloody stump between its shoulders.

She sat up and began pushing herself backwards, away from the dead creature. She had come so close to dying that her mind stuttered for some semblance of calm, failed, and reverted to an instinctual state that did nothing more than find a way to remove her from danger. She continued to push herself back until an unseen obstacle stopped her from behind. She spun around, and found a man standing there, a heavy looking gun pointed at the body of the demon. She launched herself up, preparing to fight her way through this person if it turned into another demon, rotting corpse, or anything other than a human being.

When he made no attempt to move or threaten her, she was compelled to speak.

"Thank you…whoever you are." She said meekly, unable to find any other words that qualified for such a situation. The man looked at her for a moment, and then slipped the gun into a pocket on his long black overcoat.

"You're welcome, and my name's Gabriel. And if I'm not mistaken, yours is Elisa. I don't think it would be very safe for us to stay here, so unless you have any other ideas on where to go, follow me." With that he turned and exited the room, and she hurried to follow him.

"Where are we going?" she asked as he opened the door that led out of the apartment to elated to find another person to realize that she had never met this man before, and yet, he knew her name.

"An antique store, The Golden Lizard." He replied.

"I know where that is, its just a few miles from here, we could be there in an hour, two at the most." She said excitedly.

"Good, since you know the way, I'll let you lead, but be careful." He slid through the door, checked both ways, and waved for her to follow. "We have to be careful, there's this big demon bastard following me, I can't kill it though."

Elisa spoke up, "it had a face like Jesus didn't it?"

Gabriel turned, "you've seen it? You must be pretty resourceful, or very lucky."

Elisa laughed, "Very lucky is more like it. It attacked me at my house…" she grew silent, and a look of disquiet passed over her. "…I don't want to talk about it."

Gabriel nodded, and motioned for her to lead on. She ran down the hall, but froze as the elevator doors exploded outward in a hail of twisted metal, and the Crucifix Demon emerged from the dusty debris.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

"Run!" Gabriel shouted as he roughly pushed Elisa toward the stairwell down the hall behind them. "Get out of the building now!" He yelled as he turned to follow. The Demon roared as it launched itself at them, and as they reached the stairs, Gabriel pushed Elisa through and jammed the door behind her. "Get out of the building, I'll be right behind you!" He ordered as he slammed the door and turned to face The Crucifix Demon as it barreled down the hallway. "You want another go?" Gabriel asked rhetorically as he pulled his gun from his coat pocket, reassured by its weight in his hand. The Demon came to a complete stop, and stood, filling the space between the roof and ceiling, silently waiting for some unknown signal to attack. Gabriel stood, entranced by the slow motion movements of The Beast as it swayed in place before him. 

"I see they finally showed you what you are." The words seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, assaulting Gabriel's senses, filling him with some unknowing terror, and yet, the voice seemed so familiar, so comforting. "Did they tell you everything? I think not. If they had, you would have chosen a quiet death over the hell they will surely send you to."  Gabriel took a step forward, his feet moving by themselves. Suddenly the hallway was a din of voices, most undecipherable due to the wash of noise, but two voices moved to the head of crest of the wave of noise, The Beast's demonic but appealing voice, and The Prophet's righteous but cold voice.

"Fight the temptation Gabriel! The Beast seeks to lure you in and destroy you! Resist, or there is nothing that can save you!" The Prophet's voice commanded.

"Why fight me Gabriel? They will merely destroy you when your task is complete, just as they always have. If you knew the truth, you would renounce them now and give into me! They tell sweet lies, whilst I tell the terrible truth, which would you rather have?" The Demon's eyes pierced him, laying his warrior soul bare, leaving him unable to do anything but gape in its terrifying presence. Suddenly a strange force took control of him, and he watched helplessly as the his arms extended and the gun discharged, once, twice, and so on, until the clip ran dry and the gun clicked empty, and still his hand tightened around the empty weapon, squeezing the trigger in quick, worthless motions. The Demon merely laughed, a long, cruel laugh, and advanced with a killing glee in his eyes. "If that is the way you want it to be Prophet, then your boy here will make a fine snack, to bad though, he would have made more than a capable soldier…" He raised a clawed hand, and brought it down, tearing the air as it arced toward Gabriel.

The claws came down, ripping long gashes in the floor of the hallway, as Gabriel dodged out of the way and broke into a dead run, heading toward the stairwell that Elisa had disappeared into only seconds before. His escape was halted though as a large chunk of the floor flew over his head, crushing the door in, effectively cutting off his escape. He spun around, and The Demon stood, _smiling_ at him with its sickly shaped teeth, its horrible deformed face twisted into a visage of pure bliss, and it ripped a new piece of concrete free from the wall and hurled it at him. In that split second, the warrior in Gabriel took over, and as he dodged the hurled weapon, he knew how to escape.

***

Elisa had stopped only at the sound of gunshots as she made her way out of the building, and had contemplating returning when she was pulled, against her will, from the stairwell by some force unseen to her. She was deposited, rather roughly, in the foyer of the small apartment complex, a single glass door between her and freedom, an insubstantial barrier in her blind rush to escape, and one that was easily thrown down. Back out on the street, she ran to a small park across from the complex, stopping only when she was out of breath. She then stood, pacing, waiting for the man—Gabriel—to come running from the building too, but as the seconds became moments, and her patience grew thinner, she began to weight the possibility of fleeing to her destination. _And what then dumbass_, she chided herself mentally, _at least this guy seems to know what's going on, you've got a better chance with him than you do alone_—BAMBAMBAM—she was startled by the loudness of the shoots, and watched incredulously as a second story window from the complex she had just escaped shattered outward, and a man—Gabriel—flew through it.

***

His mind thundering a mile a minute, Gabriel launched himself into the empty air, twisting as he fell to catch a gutter that ran the height of the building, and slowed him to such a point that he barely even had to brace for impact as his feet hit the concrete below, allowing him to recover and beat a hasty retreat as The Crucifix Demon tore through the wall two floors up, in hot pursuit. The Demon's landing was nowhere as graceful as Gabriel's, but it didn't seem to matter, as it immediately launched itself into an attack, barreling after Gabriel much faster than he could escape it. Gabriel suddenly stopped, dead in his tracks, and calmly turned to face The Demon, a coy smile forming on his chiseled features. He raised the gun, and The Demon laughed, a cold, twisted laugh that filled the air like a cancer, He then spoke. "I thought the Old Man explained it pretty well Gabriel, you cannot destroy Me, this isn't even my true form, it's only a manifestation, I can travel between Realms at will, as long as my true form remains intact in Hell, I will always return, and even You, the warrior spirit forged by God, do not dare step foot in My Realm." He began to laugh, a haughty laugh that was silenced as Gabriel's first shots pinged against something made of metal behind him. "What are you doing?" He asked loudly, "I refuse to believe that God's own hand forged warrior would miss a foe standing not ten feet away from him!" Gabriel snorted, then replied.

"I wasn't aiming at you, you stupid bastard, I was aiming at the gas main behind you." He fired another shot, and the explosion swallowed The Crucifix Demon whole.

Gabriel was knocked back a few feet, and as he stood, he mumbled under his breath, "who needs to kill you when I can just your body back to hell?" With a laugh, he dusted himself off and turned to wave to Elisa. "It's ok! I got Hi—" the words were lost as a twisted arm flashed from the fire behind him, snatching him into the blaze.

***

Elisa stood; dumbfounded, as the fire fell in on itself and vanished as quickly as it had come, taking The Demon, and Gabriel, with it. "Gabriel?" She called weakly, but only the sound of the slight breeze and the clammy fog answered her. "Gabriel!" She shouted loudly, and still only silence answered. She stumbled over to a low bench and collapsed against it, wanting nothing more that to surrender to the sudden tiredness that had begun to creep over her, but more afraid to now than ever. "What am I gonna do?" She asked out loud, covering her face with her hands and rocking back and forth silently, nearly sobbing. It had all been too much, waking up in a nightmare, the corpses, her boyfriend, the monster at the school, her house, her mom, and The Demon, the one that hounded her relentlessly, they one that had killed Gabriel, had probably killed the priest in her mom's room, and would've killed her too, she couldn't keep the emotions from flowing, and she found herself bawling for nearly an hour, until she didn't have the strength to sob anymore. Afterwards she sat wondering where to go next, when a sudden noise caused her to whirl around defensively.

Behind her stood the priest from her house, the one that had saved her from The Demon. His icy stare regarded her for a moment, then he spoke, "a hundred yards in that direction," he pointed off in the distance to her right, "there is a small pawnshop, head there, you will find a weapon, I would advise you to take it, and take as much ammunition as you can comfortably carry, The Beasts armies are advancing more quickly then We expected, and though normal weapons will not harm The Abomination," she thought by Abomination he surely meant The Crucifix Demon, which had shown the uncanny ability to avoid death already, "they will harm His lesser minions, and there are more coming by the second. Once you procure a weapon, and a jacket too I should think, you'd better head to The Golden Lizard, you'll meet up with Gabriel there." He finished speaking, and before Elisa could question him, he vanished into the fog, as if he had never been there. She walked around for a moment, searching for him in vain, and then she decided his advice better than standing around waiting for some monster to get her, so she started off for the pawnshop.

***

The smell of the rusty metal roused him from his sleep, and he awoke to find himself lying face down on the rusty grated ground. _Back in Hell I see_, He thought bleakly, _at least the gun's still here, and the ammo too_. He got stiffly to his feet, checking his surrounding while making sure his ammunition was still in order, and found that he was still in front of the apartment complex, the only major changes being that everything had mutated into rusty grating and fire stained concrete. "You'd figure Hell would have a more natural look, and where are all the wailing souls?" He asked with a smirk, trying to keep his spirit up even though he was feeling rather down. He was startled though as a familiar voice spoke behind him.

"This isn't Hell Gabriel, Hell is much worse. By the way, you should get the antique shop quickly, Elisa will be waiting for you" Gabriel spun around just in time to see Tyler vanish into the darkness, leaving him alone again.

"Tyler?" He called quietly, but only the thrum of unseen machinery and the sound of hot wind blowing answered him. "Well, if that's where I need to be…" He trailed off as he started off, realizing that he had no clue where the shop was, "could you at least tell me which direction it's in?" When no answer came, he decided to begin searching. He started by walking over to the place where a park had been in the normal world, hoping that perhaps a map would be found there. The only things of the park that remained in this world though were the playground equipment, and even they had become twisted to the point of looking like devices of torture instead of thing's children would play with. He did find a message though, probably left for him by whatever forces conspired against him in this hell. On a small sign post, probably where a map should have been in the normal world, a message was scrawled, this time in crayon instead of blood, the blocky letters looking like something a small child would write instead of the flowing script that he had found everywhere else, which gave this message a much more disturbing quality. He looked at the strange message, noticing the arrows and words, and immediately realizing that he was looking at a map, and he read the short message aloud. "To the east is the Lizard that you seek, to the west is whence you came, to the north there is nothing, and to the south the same, but all around you they are coming, all around they see, all around they're coming, and you're the meal they seek."

It wasn't until then that he heard the cacophony of growling laughter, and the sound of footfalls all around him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Elisa tightly gripped the cold handle of the pawnshop door, took a deep breath, and pulled. The door held tightly, rattling mockingly as she tried again. "Damn," she muttered under her breath as she turned to find a suitable tool to break the glass out, "it's always something isn't it?" She returned to the door with a small brick, dislodged from the wall of a nearby alley and forgotten ages ago, and used it to bash out the window. The sound of shattering glass was startlingly loud compared to the vacuum of silence that seemed to hover over the foggy world. Once the glass had been removed, Elisa cleared the doorframe of jagged pieces and crouched through. Inside she found a dusty room, seemingly abandoned, but well stocked with Army surplus gear and weapons as far as she could see. Rifles and handguns lined racks behind the sales counter, and Army paraphernalia, including jackets and fatigues were hanging from several racks. She immediately grabbed a jacket from the closest rack, making sure it fit correctly, and laid it on the sales counter.

Next she found a small first-aid kit and cleaned the wound on her arm, which before had been only crudely bandaged, before redressing it and setting to work procuring a weapon. She knew very little about rifles, but she'd been shooting with Mike enough times to know a little about handguns, so she found a handgun she was familiar with, which happened to be a Glock 30, a more compact version of a Glock 21. She found as many clips as she could find, nearly thirty, and loaded them all with the .45 caliber rounds that the gun used. And, to make sure she was ready, she packed a small Smith & Wesson .357, which she knew was a very powerful weapon, but would be much more cumbersome than the Glock, as a back up weapon. She packed all the ammunition into a small backpack she had taken from one of the racks, and took a fanny pack so she could pack ammo for easy reach. Armed to the teeth, she smiled and slipped through the broken door once more, back out into the misty nightmare that was once her world.

She first noticed the effect of the jacket, and how she was no longer damp and cold as she walked, which allowed her to finally keep her attention on her surroundings, which became more disturbing by the second. It was as if everyone had vanished in a single second. As she passed a small outdoor café, she noticed the plates of half eaten food, glasses half full, trays of food, some uneaten, some not, left as if the people holding them had vanished where they stood. And through it all, the deafening silence reined supreme. "Hello?" She yelled, but only the silence answered. _Damn_, She thought, _it is _way_ too quiet_. She held the Glock aloft, and squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. _Damn safety!_ She thought as she clicked it off. She tried again, and jumped involuntarily as the heavy round tore through the quiet like a dull knife. "Well," She said aloud, "if anyone, or _anything_ is around, at least it knows I'm here know." And as she spoke, she heard it, and turned involuntarily the sound grew slightly clearer. It sounded like music, and from the sound of it, it wasn't far off. She weighed her options for a moment, and then decided where there was music, there might be people, so she started off in the direction of the sound.

She followed the sound for nearly and hour before she found the small wooden door, that led to a dusty storeroom in the back of a restaurant alleyway, and she was surprised to find it ajar, which would probably account for why the music was so suddenly audible, seeing as how someone had set up a small record player on one of the boxes that lined the wall. _Well_, She thought,_ someone had to open the door, so maybe they'll come back in a moment_. A sudden breeze blew through the small, rattling a few of the lose items and pulling the door, which to this point had be flush with the inside wall, completely shut. Elisa retched at what was on the inside of it.

A man, or what was left of him, was attached securely to the door, with several crude attachments, most of them made of simple metal wire. His body was covered in hundreds, if not thousands, of deep wounds. Blood covered the door, and the wall where the door had been resting earlier. His mouth was gaping in a silent scream of agony, and his eyes were staring blankly at her. She could tell he was a cook from the white apron that was tied, or was rather hanging in tattered remains, around his waist. After a few long moments of nausea, she decided that leaving the small storeroom would be prudent, and she flung the door open quickly without looking at the lacerated corpse. Back out in the alley, she was suddenly aware of unseen eyes, watching her, regarding her, in rapt silence. She stood still for a moment, clutching the Glock tightly, allowing the comforting weight of the weapon to calm her, and then she quickly exited the alley and continued on her way to the antique shop.

***

_They had all sensed the human leave the small chamber where they had left the corpse, no longer of interest since it could no longer scream in agony, and had followed her scent quite easily. They now followed her closely enough as not to lose track, but not so closely that she would be able to easily spot them. They had enjoyed the anguished look on the young man's face and they had ripped into him, and had enjoyed it even more as his choked screams had filled the air. He had died though, leaving them all angry, and longing for a new plaything, something they could rip, and cut, and tear, and make her scream. They would not be so quick this time, they would make her suffer, make her feel the pain they felt, make her cry, make her bleed, make her die, slowly, much more fun that the young man from the storeroom, they had been greedy then, unchecked in their new found rage, and unable to hold themselves in check long enough to make the killing pleasurable, but this time, this time, it would be divine._

***

She froze as she heard the wheezing giggle behind her, leveling the gun at the thick fog involuntarily, ready to fire on anything that might try to attack her from the fog, but found _only_ the fog, nothing more. She stood still though, and listened for a long moment, straining to hear some sound, a footstep, another giggle, anything that would confirm or deny her suspicions. 

Her heart sank as several bursts of insane giggling erupted from all around her. The first ragged shape stumbled from the fog directly in front of her, and she gagged at the sight of it. It was the size of a toddler, but the resemblance ended there, in fact and resemblance to any living creature ended there. The most glaring difference were their missing legs, the tiny monster had no legs to speak of, only atrophied little pieces of flesh that hung limply beneath it as it stumbled toward her, walking with its hands, using them as feet. As it got closer though, she could see that it didn't need the hands that it used as feet, because it had a separate set of arms that seemed to sprout from its chest and end in wicked looking hands, with long, spindly fingers. Each finger ended in a long, sharp claw, nearly three inches long. Its misshapen head wobbled back and forth as it moved in a staggered line toward her, giggling the entire way. When she saw its eyes, or what was left of them, she leveled the gun and looked down the barrel, between the empty sockets that poured gore from them like rivers.

_BAM_! The giggling stopped as the bullet ripped through its gore drenched torso, and was replaced with a high pitched, infantile scream.

She yelped in surprise as she felt a set of claws slash at her pant leg from behind. She spun, and found a new demon had snuck up behind her and attempted to claw her leg. She pointed the gun at its head and fired, sending an explosion of chunky gore all over the pavement at her feet, and the little beast died convulsing at her feet. She turned attention back to the first one, the one she had shot in the chest, and found it crawling toward her, wheezing as it labored to breath, dragging itself toward her with all the strength it could muster. She fired one shot, and ended it struggle.

She turned to run, and found that a horde of nearly twenty little demons had cut off her exit, each giggling in insane glee as they began to advance.

_BAM! _She began firing, making sure to place each shot between the eyes, as a way to conserve bullets, and a way to end the lives of these little monsters as humanely as possible.  She continued shooting as the line of toddler sized creatures closed in around her, and then ran through the gap she had opened with the Glock. Once through, and turned back in time to see the demons turn on their fallen brethren, tearing at their dead flesh with knife like talons, turning their already blood covered bodies into lumps of bleeding flesh, which wasn't much more than they already were. _Cannibals_, She though, _well then, maybe they'll forget about me long enough for me to get away_. She was startled by a screeching sound, and glanced to her right just in time to see one of the little beasts hop up onto the roof of a car, before jumping off to continue its pursuit. All at once, they became more than shambling demons as the horde behind her, now finished picking over the remains of their fallen, turned and began running after her, the sounds of their fleshy hands slapping the concrete barely audible of the din of giggling that suddenly erupted from all directions.

She targeted the closest monster, the one that had jumped down from the parked car, and fired a single shot, and cursed loudly as the thing dodged it easily. _SHIT!_ _How'd they get so fast?_ She thought. She turned and yanked the trigger of the Glock, only to hear the deafening click as the firing pin fell on empty space. She fumbled for the fanny pack's small zipper, trying desperately to tear it open and reload the weapon, and having very little luck, then her hand fell on the handle of the .357, and she smiled in spite of her predicament. She pulled it from her belt and spun in one quick motion, pointing the heavy weapon at the closest pursuer, and fired, her arm jerking back from the recoil, her ears ringing from the loud report, and watched as the bullet careened into the demon, shattering it's body and throwing it back into the rest of them. They wavered uncertainly, there heads up in the air, watching her alertly, but at the same time they seemed to be sniffing, as if they were trying to smell something in the air, but she smelled nothing, heard nothing, and waited, gun trained on the threat before her. Then, all at once, the demons fled, screeching loudly with their infantile screams, until they faded away into the fog, and were gone. "Huh?" She grunted in her confusion, "they get scared pretty easy." She laughed, and turned to continue on her way, though this time, she was much more alert to her surroundings, and she made sure all the guns were full, in case the little demons gained some ounce of courage and returned for her.

***

_They watched her leave, and could barely contain their rage at the prospect of losing a new toy, a new creature to torture. They were smarter than that though, and they knew when larger predators were around, they had smelled it almost immediately, its stench was easily recognizable, and its aura, which they were particularly adept at sensing, stood out against their surroundings like a black dot against a white piece of paper. She belonged to it now, the big creature, the one that with the wings, she was its toy now, its plaything, they had no more claim to it, for it was a much more powerful predator than they, and it would have its way with her, whether they like it or not. They chose not to confront it, for they knew it brought pain, and even they feared the pain it brought. It was coming, and the girl, she was to be its next meal. They could only hope they didn't encounter the pain bringer, the one with the thorny mane. It was a predator indeed, they had watched in the early hours of their lives as it had painted the streets red with the blood of hundreds, leaving them to clean up the bloody scraps as it stalked off for more prey, the aura of hatred around it choked them, filling them with the desire to flee, which is what they did, they had not seen it since, and hoped not to ever again._

***

She moved quickly, making sure of her surroundings, not wanting to have another run in with the infantile monsters that had so suddenly fled before. Her attention was completely focused ahead of her though, and she didn't notice the sleek shape that seemed to flow from the roof of the building behind her, landing without any noise above a whisper. She didn't notice as it silently stalked her, making sure that she didn't discover it by ducking into alleys when she turned to glance behind her, waiting until it was sure she wasn't looking before slipping quietly out to continue its single minded hunt, following her scent as if it were runway lights, slowly closing in, until she was just beyond its reach, then, like a coil that had been wound too tightly, it sprung on her. She turned too late, and was in its grasp before she could so much as squeak in terror. It squeezed tightly, crushing the breath from her, at first she thought of the thing from her house, sure that it had survived the explosion at the apartments, and that it had followed her, and would now squeeze the life from her. When she looked at it though, she found a new monster, less frightening, but much more disturbing. It was a creature, well, more of a cross between several creatures, that should not—_could not_—exist. She saw a lizard-like body, complete with a long thin tail, a human head, though twisted and deformed in the same manner as the rest of the monsters she had encountered, and wings, huge wings, covered in long black feathers, which covered most of the body as well, though they were ragged and were missing in large patches, mostly areas of flesh that oozed with festering sores, white puss mixed with blood that flowed into the shiny black feathers. Its arms were long, and ended in disproportionate hands with fingers that were almost half as long as she was tall. It drew her close, and opened its jaws slowly, then, with a sickening _CRACK_ the jaw dislocated, falling back to swallow her whole. She tightly shut her eyes as the first wave of hot, stinking breath hit her, not wanting to see her fate as it unfolded before her, eaten alive by some demon that shouldn't even exist.

_WHAM!_

She felt as much as hear the impact as something heavy landed on a car directly behind the winged beast, which suddenly dropped her to assess the new threat which had so loudly made itself known. She open her eyes and saw it, standing amidst the remains of what had been a small sports utility vehicle, and was now little more than scrap, she saw it, and knew it before her mind even registered it presence. It _had _followed her. It _had_ come. It _was_ here.

It was The Crucifix Demon.

Her vision hazed and began to fade as her oxygen starved brain choked for air, and as the world around her faded into blackness, she thought she heard The Crucifix Demon bellow, a definite howl that could mean one thing, it had challenged the winged beast, and she was to be the prize.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

_He stood in the wreckage of what had been a car, bellowing his call of challenge, never once taking his eyes off the girl. If this pathetic beast, this byproduct, no matter how useful in the past, so much as harmed a hair on her head, he would dash it into a bloody smear on the pavement. It took up the call, changing its pitch to offer its own challenge, as even the dumbest of The Master's children knew the Way of Rights, and he, The Master's most trusted, had just challenged it for the girl's life, and he was determined to win, he knew he would win, all cowered before The Master's right hand, His eyes, His ears, His might, His hate, His weapon, His general, He who would lead the armies of darkness to the Gates of Heaven, the pearly spires that reached up into infinity, and burn them down. This petty beast, in its single-minded quest for sustenance, knew not what fate awaited him._

***

Elisa was aware of only motion as she fell through the air, forgotten, cast aside, left alone in the clinging fog to die. She knew not the war that raged just beyond the darkened haze of her vision, she knew not the benefactor that had come as champion for her life. She knew nothing, only that she was free of the grasp of the horrible winged thing, and that after she regained the ability to, she was going to run as fast as she could, as far as she could, as hard as she could, until her legs gave out, until her lungs bled from exertion, until she was no longer able to run, and then, if she had to, she would use the Glock to end her torment, _better than being eaten by that thing_, She thought as her lungs began to work again. Suddenly a deafening howl roused her from her suffocating reverie, and she opened her eyes to find the winged beast, and worse, The Crucifix Demon, posturing as if to fight. _What a strange twist of Fate_, She thought wryly, _it's tried its damnedest to kill me now for who knows how long, and now it comes to rescue me in just the nick of time, will wonders never cease?_ The thought was drowned out by the sudden, intensely loud answering howl that flowed forth from the winged thing's mouth. The Demon, now incensed to the point of attack, leapt from the twisted remains of the SUV and swung a massive, clawed hand at the winged thing's black, bird-like eyes. The combined howls of the combatants ended and they threw themselves at each other, a mess of clawed limbs and teeth, fighting to the death.

She struggled to crawl backward, tried desperately to put some distance between herself and the tornado of death that was the demons. She raised the gun, miraculously still in her grasp through the fall, and fired a shot into the fray, and cursed loudly as the shot sparked off the wreckage of the SUV, doing nothing more than adding a loud _PING_ to the sounds of the fray. When she was satisfied that she could do nothing to harm either combatant, and that neither of them seemed to be paying her any heed, she quickly got to her feet and ran as fast and far as she could, until she could no longer run, and she fell to the ground again, nauseous from the exertion, no longer caring if she died, almost welcoming the release, she would open her arms to death, she would let its icy hands flow over her, through her, and, as the blackness once again encroached on her blurred vision, she thought she could make out a figure standing not too far in front of her, a man, with long, flowing blonde hair, she could barely make out his facial features, strong chin, perfectly sculpted nose and cheek bones, overall, a very beautiful face, but when she saw the eyes, her breath caught in her throat, and her entire being shivered.

The figure's eyes were completely devoid of color, in fact, they were almost devoid of anything more than a pinprick of black in their centers. She was transfixed on them, unable to even breathe as long as they held her gaze and he began to walk to her, and she began to feel chilled as some unseen aura that followed the figure suddenly washed over her. It seemed to surge with power, authority, and something else, something…darker, something that frightened her, and as she succumbed to the weakness of her body, she was filled with dread at what this figure might do to her, but the sudden release of consciousness pushed the feeling away, and she was engulfed by blackness.

***

_The lesser demon was no match for his refined ability, he'd been taught to fight by The Master Himself, he'd been forged in the Lake of Fire, he'd tasted combat before he was more than ten minutes old, had been born to it, had loved it, and he loved it no less as he landed his first blow against one of his Master's weaker minions, one who didn't share the plan, one who knew nothing of his true place in the War, one that was more concerned with its struggle for sustenance than The Master's dream, The Master's plan, The Master's life. He relished the smell of newly spilled blood as it flowed freely from the chest wounds he'd inflicted on the bastard demon that had sought, however unknowingly, to compromise the hard work of his Master, of his Father. He danced with glee at the sight of its pain filled eyes, he nearly stopped in place to drink in the sound of its agonized screams as it ripped a black, feathery wing clear from the thing's shoulder. He lunged once more, pulling the other wing loose and brandishing it like a club, thrashing the beast with its own body part. Finally, he grew tired of toying with the pathetic animal, and he flung his clawed hand in an ascending arc, piercing the thing's abdomen and driving his hand through it's hot entrails to grasp it's spinal column, with he then brutally jerked from his body, shattering it's spine and reducing it to no more than a quivering mass of cooling meat, a growing pool of blood growing around it like a red halo. There he stood, for nearly ten minutes, reveling in the carnage, he raised the section of spinal column high above his head as if it were some trophy, and bellowed, the howl rising loudly above the dead city and shaking the very earth beneath it, until it was cut short by a new sensation, one that blotted out his unbound joy that had accompanied the killing of the winged demon, and filled him with a new joy, one that a child feels after seeing their beloved parents after a long separation._

_The Master had come._

_He knew it better than he knew himself, he could sense His power coming from the direction the girl had been headed, so he took off, bounding in the same direction like a puppy coming to the call of his master._

_The Master had come. The time was nearly upon them._


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

The cackling laughter erupted once again as Gabriel waved the gun around, training it on phantom movements that seemed to fly to a fro in the darkness just at the edge his vision, so fleeting that he never even had a chance to discern whether they were living creatures or some hallucination brought on by his current location. He fired three times at one of the phantoms, and was rewarded with an unearthly shriek, somewhat like an infant crying, but perverted to such an extent that it was no longer even remotely human. He continued firing into the darkness at the phantom shapes until the cackling died, and was replaced with the sound of silence, which was intermittently broken by the sounds of foot falls on metal grating. He backed against a metal pole that might have been a light post in the real world, but now was little more than a twisted spire made of rusted steel. He stood, back to it, gun facing the uncertain darkness before him, until a sickly light seemed to fill the area, and he looked up, noticing for the first time that the pole was indeed a light post, and, through some miracle, it worked, illuminating the darkness, and exposing the horribly twisted creatures that stalked just within the light. 

They were large, almost as tall as him, but they appeared to be little more than a torso, the only thing resembling legs were the atrophied pieces of flesh that dangled at what might have been a waist. The used their muscular arms for what a normal bipedal creature would use legs for, and he noticed that they had a separate, smaller set of arms growing from their chest, they appeared to used for grasping and manual dexterity, for each arm carried with it a hand equipped with long, grasping fingers, and each finger ended in a wicked claw, nearly four inches long by Gabriel's best estimate, and they looked as if they were made for clawing flesh to pieces. They resumed cackling as they light dimmed and they were once again skulking in the shadows. One of the braver ones scurried out from the protection of the darkness and made a move to attack Gabriel, but was cut short by two loud reports from the handgun, which sent it sprawling on the grating; it's lifeblood seeping through the gaps in metal as it convulsed a few times, then grew still. "Anyone else wanna play?" he said with a dark smile. Another one of the creatures trotted forward and grabbed its fallen comrade with its spidery hands and began to quickly pull it back into the shadows, where the rest of the cackling beasts converged upon them and the cackling laughter turned to sounds of blood spilling and flesh ripping as they began to rip, tear, and eat the fallen demon.

Disgusted by this open display of cannibalism, Gabriel fired an entire clip into the crowd of beasts, knocking three more to the floor and sending the rest screeching back into the darkness, where they waited, cackling and growling. Gabriel ejected the empty clip and reached back into the backpack he had been outfitted with for another, he then slapped it into the gun and chambered a round. He slowly began to edge toward his destination while keeping his eyes on the dark forms that danced before him. When one would grow brave and overstep the boundaries of the shadows, he would fire at it eliciting an inhuman screech and more often than not, killing the brave creature. As he edged along though, he began to doubt more and more that he would escape unscathed, and he was unsure of how much ammunition his backpack actually held, and he was more than sure that he didn't want to be caught out in the open with the freak beasts without some firepower to back him up. He had only one other choice though, and it was life threatening at best, and suicidal at worst. It was his only choice though, so he forced himself into moving and was running down the dark metal road before he knew, and behind him, the cackling grew louder, and closer, until he couldn't hear anything but it.

He knew then that he was going to die.

***

_They could smell his fear-drenched body as he ran through the darkness. They were closing in faster than he could run, within moments he would be a screaming, quivering plaything, and then, slowly, they would drain the life from him, until they felt whole again, and the cycle would begin anew. They were in constant pain, it was all they knew, it bled from them like sweat from a fearful body, and now it raged with such force that it drove them to new heights of violence, they were forced to attack and slaughter the weaker demons, even their own kind, just to satisfy their voracious hunger, and to ease their torment, for the only thing that even came close to easing the pain was to inflict the pain on other beings._

_Early on in their existence, when they were fortunate enough to encounter some unlucky being that had been trapped in the between realm with them, they had wasted little time in sharing their pain. They had delighted in the agonized looks on their faces as they slowly carved their flesh with long talons. They fed on the screams of the damned, the pain, the fear they bled, and early on, that had been enough, they had been happy, they had grown numerous, and then, as the flow of new victims decreased, they grew angry, and weaker, and they were reduced to preying upon their weaker brethren, and fighting amongst themselves for what little sustenance they could glean from their corpses. Now though, they had prey that one of the unlucky ones from before, one of the poor souls who had been pulled between realms, into the limbo realm of steel and concrete, blood and rust, darkness and death, and left there to be eaten by the demons that inhabited it, demons like themselves, and some who were much, much, worse._

_Suddenly the human turned and fired back at one of his closest pursuers. The quiet thrum of the mechanical drone that always seemed to dominate the quiet of Limbo was shattered by several loud explosions as his weapon jumped several times in his clutching grasp. One of their brethren fell back screeching as the heavy rounds tore through him, and suddenly the air was filled with the scent of his pain, and, like a beacon of light, they were drawn to it. They began ripping and cutting at their fallen comrade with razor sharp claws, rending it bleeding flesh and causing it to screech in pain, but soon the sounds were drowned out by their cackling growls as minor fights over the kill escalated into new bloodshed, and more pain._

_Soon the human was forgotten as they reveled in their ability to bring pain to themselves with deadly precision._

***

The cackling demons had turned on each other after he'd shot three or four down, and for that Gabriel was thankful, but now he was in a serious predicament. In his haste, he had gotten turned around, and now he didn't know which direction was which, and was effectively lost, perhaps forever. He had no idea which way the antique shop was from where he stood, he had no idea where anything was, or, for that matter, where he was either. He stood, alone, in the darkness, and cursed everything he could think to curse. When he was finished, he turned, and slowly, carefully, traced his way back to the small park where he had first found the crayon scrawled directions. Along the way, he made doubly sure to check his surrounds carefully before and after each step, and after what seemed like an eternity, he was standing before the sign, and rereading the scrawled message with a nervous grin on his face. _Finally_, he thought, _things might actually be looking_ up_ for a change_. Then he noticed the smaller message at the corner of the sign, one carved into the wood and colored with the slightest tinge of crimson, and his nervous smile turned into a scowl as his entire body tensed for an attack.

_We can see you Gabriel_, _you won't leave here alive._ As if to punctuate the message, a loud cackling howl shot up through the night.

Once again Gabriel was running.

***

He stood not far away from Gabriel, hidden of course, by the darkness of the perpetual night that held Limbo in its cold grasp.

_Funny_, he thought, _even Hell has daylight, even if it _is_ choked by smoke. Why would Hell, if it were such a bad place, have an actual day and night cycle, but here, in this nether realm, there is none, in fact, I find it much worse than Hell ever could be…huh…maybe once I've burned The Gates I'll turn this into Hell, if it lasts through the transitions. It would make an extremely effective Hell wouldn't it?_ He smiled to Himself, the smile widening as the cackling howl rose into the dead sky and Gabriel bolted into the darkness. He had no need to follow, all He had to do was will it and He could see through the eyes of any demon, they were all His bastard children of course, He could control them too, so He was comfortable with the fact that He was letting Gabriel, the only _true_ threat to his plans escape, He had no need to follow, and He wouldn't if He didn't want to.

He was interested in Gabriel's progress though, so He decided now would be a good time to see through the eyes of one of His many children, and He closed His eyes, searching with His mind for one that would be suitable to carry his consciousness with it, and He found one quickly, or did it find Him? He knew not, and He didn't care, for now it was following Gabriel, and so was He. He would enjoy this little show greatly.

***

Gabriel barely heard it over the pounding of his boots on the grating, which he could barely hear over the pounding of his heart in his chest. When he did hear it though, he knew it immediately, it was the sound of air moving, with a slight _swish_ to it, it was the sound of wings, and it was right above him.

He turned just in time to see the dark winged shape fall from the blackness as it dove at him. He was suddenly thrown to the ground as a burning sensation broke out all along his left arm, and his hand quit responding. As he quickly got to his feet, he assessed the situation, and found that his chances for survival had suddenly dropped drastically, from very slim to none in the span of twenty minutes. _At least I still have this_, he thought as he pulled the gun from his coat with his good hand and brought it level with the dark shape scrabbling along the grating toward him, _now _bring it on you demon son of a bitch_. As if sensing what Gabriel thought, the demon hissed and attacked. Gabriel's perception slowed down to a crawl as it launched itself forward, it's maw widening and seeming to crack and widen some more, it was an impossible mixture of reptile and bird, human and beast. He noticed feathers first, covering its body everywhere except it's face, which was decidedly human, even if it had more reptilian features than human features, it's body was a strange mixture of human, reptilian, and avian anatomy. It had arms and legs that favored human limbs, only stretched and jointed like a lizards, it had a long thin tail, much like a lizard, and a longer neck than it should have had, but it also had huge, flowing wings, it was almost graceful, in a demonic sort of way. Whether or not it was graceful didn't matter though, because within just a few seconds, it would be on top of him, ripping him to shreds._

_Game over,_ he thought bleakly, _unless I act fast._ Before he could even finish the thought, the demon's clawed hand was flying in a tight arc toward him. In a split second of action, which seemed like an eternity to Gabriel's heightened perception, he was rolling on the grating, and coming to his feet right beside the beast's head, then he was lowering the gun, placing the barrel directly against it's temple, and pulling the trigger, not once, not twice, but until the gun clicked empty and he was reaching into the pack for a fresh clip. Suddenly the moment was shattered as the beast swatted him casually to the ground and was on top of him before he even had the chance to throw up his arms in self-defense. The beast tore at him, ripping his jacket to shreds in seconds, and, pinned down as he was, he would tear Gabriel apart within just a few minutes. Gabriel couldn't push it off of him, and he couldn't fight back, so he closed his eyes, summoned all the calmness he could, and resigned to his fate. As the pain began to intensify, a rumbling filled his ears, and his entire body shook with strong vibrations. Suddenly he had the sensation that the grating below him was beginning shaking, and with a jolt it began to shudder violently.

At the same time, he heard a sound like rending metal, at understood at once what was happening.

The beast seemed to understand as well, and with a shrill cry, it took to the sky and vanished into the endless night. Gabriel stood, looking down at his ragged clothing, he tried to staunch the warm blood that seeped from under the torn fabric, but it was coming faster than he could stop it. That was the least of his concerns thought, for when he looked up from his wounds, he noticed something in the distance, and it made his stomach turn.

The path back the small park, the way he'd come, was now coming apart, the little pieced disintegrating as they flew upward into the darkness. The destruction was slowly advancing his way.

***

"Goddammit!" He yelled into the darkness as He watched the world slowly come apart below Him. He knew it would happen eventually, but not this soon. _Maybe this is for the best_, He thought,_ the middle realm was growing useless anyway, now I can go onto the next phase_. He slowly made his way across the building tops in order to follow Gabriel, and also to avoid being swept up in the tidal wave of destruction, as the limbo world was ripped apart behind Him.

***

Gabriel was beginning to tire. The blood loss from the attack left him feeling weak, and he was starting to get dizzy, though he dared not stop for fear of falling into the abyss as the world came apart behind him. Fear pushed him only so far though, and before long his steps began to falter, and he stumbled, falling flat on his face. When he tried to get up, he found that he no longer had the strength to get his arms underneath him. The rumbling grew to an almost painful level as the world was jarred beneath him and gave way. Then he was falling, and the world of rusted steel and bloodstains fell away from him as he plummeted into the endless night of the abyss. His last thought was simply one word.

Damn.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note: Ok. It took forever. I know it took forever, and I'm sorry. But maybe this means I'm back, and that I'll be writing again, consistently. Well anyway, enjoy. I'll start working on the revisions of the earlier chapters before long…I hope.

Chapter 12

            Elisa sat up with a start, gasping for air and relishing it's taste, and writhing in agony as its icy fingers pierced the raw inside of her throat, stinging it like a billion bees. She would've screamed if she could have, but as it was her vocal cords were so stiff they wouldn't even function. She sat in silent agony, forcing her self to breathe so that she wouldn't suffocate, but cringing in pain with every life sustaining breath. She went on like this for a few moments, until a glass of water, or at least some other clear fluid, was placed on the table before her. She greedily accepted it, gulping the cool but bitter fluid down as fast as she could, soothing her throat by a large measure. When she was finished, she looked over her shoulder at her mysterious benefactor, and was immediately frozen in place by an inexplicable terror, not even budging as the now empty glass crashed loudly into the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces.

            The man, the one with the colorless eyes, the one from before she lost consciousness, was standing over her shoulder.

            She sat, rigid and afraid for a moment, not even caring who or what the man was, knowing only that he felt _wrong_, and that recent events dictated that anything that felt wrong was probably just that. The man stood, staring into her eyes, holding them with his fixed, cold, colorless stare. Slowly he extended a hand and closed her mouth, his face splitting into an all-knowing smile.

            "Close your mouth dear, it's rude to gape at people." He patted her on the head almost paternally. Her stare followed him as he worked his way around the small table and sat down across from her. He was clothed in a plain black suit, much like what a corporate executive or some other businessman would wear. He straightened the lapels as he sat and then reached across the table to offer his hand to Elisa.

            "Pleased to meet you Elisa, won't you guess my name?" He said with a wicked smile.

***

            Gabriel woke slowly, almost painfully. His body seemed to slowly materialize, because he couldn't feel his legs or arms at all. His arms and legs slowly came back to him, though they were accompanied with an intense, hellish pain. He sat up slowly, his body creaking with each inch, until he sat upright with a groan. He surveyed his body with a frown, noting all the little, and a few big, lumps, bruises, and cuts. His gun was nowhere to be found, as was the ammunition and backpack. His left pant's leg was torn and shredded into almost nothing just below the knee. His left leg was battered black and blue from his knee all the way to where his boot covered it. He massaged it gingerly, testing for a broken bone. When he was sure it wasn't going to hurt him any further, he stood.

            It was an effort in willpower.

            After several attempts he finally stood, unarmed and vulnerable, and looked around at his new surroundings. He seemed to be back in the real world. He pondered for a moment at how it was possible that he could fall into oblivion in the limbo realm and end up in the real world. His confusion was only compounded by the fact that he knew absolutely nothing about the part of the real world he'd been so unceremoniously left at.

            "Well, I wonder where I'm at." he said aloud in an irritated tone. He was in a small courtyard lined on all sides by red brick walls. There was a small hedge on the edges of a cobblestone path leading to a tall, rather decrepit looking set of double doors. This scene was mirrored on the opposite end of the courtyard, where an almost identical set of doors stood. On either side of the courtyard there were well tended, at some point at least, flowerbeds. During the interminable time the world, or at least the city around them, had undergone it's horrible transformation into a ghost town the flowerbeds had fallen into disarray and the wilted skeletons were all that remained of what might've been very pretty orchids, roses, or some other kind of flower. He weighed his options.

            _Door number one_, he thought quietly to himself. _Or door number two?_

            He paced the courtyard for a few minutes, trying to find some clue as to where he was. He was so deep in thought that he didn't even notice the lone figure standing before door number one until the figure cleared it's throat, startling Gabriel and pulling him out of his contemplative trance. He immediately assumed a defensive posture, raising his empty hands and placing his weight on his uninjured right leg. The figure, a man dressed in priest's garb, shook his head and smiled bitterly.

            "You would strike a man of the cloth Gabriel?" he asked sarcastically, "how unbecoming of a warrior of God."

            "It'd serve you right for sneaking up on a soldier of God." He smiled in spite of himself, and approached the priestly man with a laugh. "Tyler, you're a sight for sore eyes, how've you been?" He said as he reached out to clap the man on the shoulder.

            His smile faded as his hand passed completely through Tyler's body.

            "Not too good Gabriel, as you can tell." He replied grimly, his gaze dropping as his cold blue eyes brimmed with tears.

            "What happened to you Tyler?" Gabriel asked in confusion.

            Tyler sighed, "I died Gabriel."

            "At the church, was it the demon?"

            "No, God intervened then, He took me from that place. He sent a shadow of myself to you in the alley. He then sent me to save Elisa from the beast when she returned to her home. I didn't survive that encounter. Luckily, the girl did." He recounted the tale of the candles, the gas, and the fiery explosions, the pain. When he finished speaking he resigned himself to a sullen silence, staring at Gabriel's feet. A long silence lurked between them.

            "All of that, just to save one girl?" Gabriel said incredulously.

            Tyler's eyes shot up, piercing Gabriel's. "Don't trivialize my death Gabriel, that _girl_ holds just as much significance in this as you do. Without her all is lost."

            "Well then, where the hell is she?"

***

            The suited man's hand lingered in the dead air between himself and Elisa.

            "You're not even going to try and guess my name?" He said with an ever-widening smile. "I know you've heard it countless times. It's plastered all over the place."

            Elisa's face remained devoid of any emotion, her eyes blankly staring at the man sitting before her at the small café table. She knew, or at least could guess, who he was. She wasn't sure though, so she waited for him to make introductions. The man sighed and dropped his hand.

            "Fine, if you must be petulant I think I'll just introduce myself."

            He stood and shrugged off the vestiges of his human form.

            Elisa instinctively shrunk away at the sight that was unfolding before her. Where the man had been standing only seconds before, there now stood the visage of what could only be called an angel. His wings, though tattered and torn, were the color of the purest gold, with strange, rusty crimson streaks. It looked almost as though some great painter had painted those wings, and displeased with the purity of them, doused them with crimson ink. His skin was the finest alabaster, pure and unblemished. His eyes shined with a hazel-gold sheen, intense and filled to the brim with anguish. He seemed to grow before Elisa, until she stood before a titan, a creature of pure glory, his flowing blonde hair danced about as if they had become fiery tongues. In his presence, she was powerless.

            "What…what are you?" Elisa finally stammered.

            "I am," his voice flowed forth lyrically, like the sweetest music, or like the purest rain, "the faded glory of The Morningstar. My name was sung in the heavens, I was once the second most loved off all His children. You know me as Lucifer, The Adversary, _The Beast_…I was once the champion of creation, and I was struck down by the petty jealousy of The Almighty. Now…" He trailed off, a single golden tear slowly snaked its way down his perfect face and fell to the ground, and where it fell the ground cracked slightly, and the purest water seemed to bubble up and pool around that spot.

            Elisa was entranced by the magnificence of the being, Lucifer himself, which stood before her.

            Inwardly Lucifer smiled the most wicked, cruel smile he could.

            _It's a great thing when plans go this well_, he thought, and in his own mind he laughed a long, hard, evil laugh.

***

            _He watched silently from the rooftop as Gabriel and the priest's ghost conversed in the courtyard. _So the priest _did_ die in the explosion_, he thought with a grin, _I'd hate to know I didn't at least hurt him badly. _He stepped to the edge; careful to avoid the dead gaze of the priest until he was sure Gabriel was unarmed. He seethed with anger, anger at being defeated by a mere human priest, being challenged by one of The Master's own children, and anger at the difficulty which he had had in finding Gabriel, a mere man. Suddenly, on a whim, he decided to give into the anger._

_            He leapt off the roof with a howl, aiming to land just behind Gabriel._

***

            Gabriel felt the ground behind him buckle long before he registered the howl or the terrified look on Tyler's ghost's face. He was suddenly a blur of motion, ducking under the fatal swipe of the demon's clawed hand, watching as Tyler disappeared, or was rather dispelled, when the deadly arc reached him. Gabriel immediately leapt clear of the monster and started running, or trying to run, for door number two. An angry howl followed him as he careened into the door, knocking it ajar. He spun quickly and slammed it shut just in time to be knocked back as the demon charged into it shoulder first. The door held though, through some small miracle, and Gabriel rose quickly to his feet and retreated deeper into the dark hallway. His heart sank as he hear the rending of metal, followed quickly by the rage-filled howl of his pursuer somewhere back in the darkness. He pushed himself harder, ignoring the agony that burst through his injured left leg with each step. The howls were getting louder, which meant the demon was drawing closer, which meant Gabriel had to run faster if he wanted to survive.  He looked for any exit he could find, hoping to put more distance between him and the howling monstrosity that seemed intent on his death. Finally, his sharp eyes paid off and he ducked through a single door on his right.

            He entered into a large room, much like a storage warehouse. The floor was empty though, and about twenty-five feet below where he entered the room at. There was a small catwalk extending to his left ending in a short set of stairs. He rushed toward them, his speed fueled by the sound of the demon tearing through the door behind him. He took the stairs two at a time, his injured leg screaming at him over the loud roar of his demon assailant. He hit the warehouse floor fast, almost tripping, and took off toward the light of the open loading bay shutter. He heard a strange groaning sound that quickly became a screeching and then suddenly stopped.

            The twisted remains of the catwalk suddenly blocked off the loading bay door, cutting off Gabriel's only means of escape.

            Gabriel spun around just it time to see the demon start his murderous charge forward, his head down and claws forward in an unmistakable killing posture. There was no way possible for Gabriel to dodge the beast this time. He was going to die.

            At the last moment possible, a forklift became his savior and salvation.

            It happened so quickly that Gabriel didn't even realized it had happened until afterward. The demon was charging toward him one second, and then the next he was against the far wall, impaled on one of a forklift's massive forks. His mind wouldn't process it all, and he stood dumbfounded until the forklift caught fire and exploded into a ball of orange flame. The dying shrieks of the beast filled the large warehouse floor until, like the fire, they died down and were gone. He looked around for the driver, but found no one.

            "Looks like even dead men can still have a few tricks up their sleeves, eh?" Tyler's voice filled Gabriel's ears and then disappeared back into the ether.

            "Thank you again, my friend." Gabriel said with a laugh as he made his way through the wreckage of the catwalk and back out into the dim, foggy, light of day. He stood for a moment trying to get his bearings when Tyler's voice piped back up again.

            "Head west young man!" it said, with a chuckle. Gabriel looked off to the west and saw a hand-made, green sign, with golden lettering.

            It read "The Golden Lizard Antique Shoppe. Two miles straight ahead.".


End file.
